Cane River

On a Creole plantation along Louisiana's Cane River, four generations of women build a family across a century of upheaval. Elisabeth is the plantation cook and matriarch; her daughter Suzette is a house slave whose life is shaped by a master's relative; Suzette's daughter Philomene uses a powerful white man's desire and her own gift for foresight to win protection, and after slavery ends, land and schooling for her descendants; and Philomene's daughter Emily carries the family into the segregated 20th century. Drawn from Lalita Tademy's own genealogical research, the novel follows these women from the 1830s through the Civil War and into the 1930s as they fight to keep their children close and forge freedom on their own terms.